AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 445 



FORMER OBJECTIONS TO THE COLLEGE. 



A prominent source of opposition to the college at that day was the 

 prevalent prejudice against A\hat was sueeringlv termed scientific farm- 

 ing. To many there appeared to be something dudish in college agricul- 

 ture. School farming was regarded as something foppish, and it is true 

 that a fop nowhere seems more out of place than when he attempts to 

 guide the operations of an industry which, above all others, demands the 

 ■exercise of a practical judgment and a tendency to look upon the prac- 

 tical side of things. Educated dandies and visionary theorists are useless 

 everywhere, certainly so in a calling which constantly deals with the 

 most hidden processes of nature; but the people of Michigan have long 

 since learned that the most practical lessons in agriculture, the most 

 profitable, the most money-making in every branch of that industry, have 

 come from the professors and graduates of this institution. As agricul- 

 ture is the mother of arts, so it is the most comprehensive of sciences; 

 it embraces a great variety of special industries; it opens numberless 

 avenues for remunerative exertion; it has numerous roads to the attaiur 

 ment of wealth; there is scarcely a single truth of science or acquisition 

 of knowledge w^hich may not be appropriated, utilized and effectively 

 wielded for its improvement and success; Michigan people have come 

 to realize this; and if they have discarded the sneer at the educated and 

 scientific farmer, it is in no small measure due to this college which, 

 during these past forty years, has been gradually proving its utility by 

 obvious results and with such irresistable force of demonstration as to 

 remove one of the most common and apparently one of the most effective 

 obections urged against its first adoption as a feature of our educational 

 evstem. 



Another objection to the college, one which has even had support from 

 some who confess the value of its aims, has arisen from a feeling that it 

 ought to have been consolidated with the university. This was once a 

 favorite theory with many prominent educators and influential citizens; 

 but experience has shown the futility of incorporating into one, two 

 institutions so unlike in purpose and in their sphere of operation. It has 

 been seen to be inconvenient for the university to so broaden its curric- 

 ulum as to embrace studies' required in a preparation for pursuits chiefly 

 industrial. Besides, it is obvious that the university can never suffice 

 for the growing demands of higher education in the State, so that in 

 time there must be a multiplication of universities or an additional sup- 

 ply of institutions designed and equipped for an individualized province 

 in the work of edncatiou. We must hear in mind that synthesis is not 

 the only method of development; analysis is equally required by the law 

 of universal progress; all organized being advances toward perfection by 

 being specialized; the most complete unity is attained through diversity. 

 The Agricultural College and the university will be but parts of Mich- 

 igan's ''stupendous whole." when time shall have rounded out and per- 

 fected, as it is now fast doing, her higher educational system and have 

 -crowned it with final completeness. 



Another obstacle encountered by the early advocates of this college 

 was the attitude of the denominational institutions of the State, then 



